“I many times thought peace had come, When peace was far away; As wrecked men deem they sight the land At centre of the sea, And struggle slacker, but to prove, As hopelessly as I, How many the fictitious shores Before the harbor lie.”

American poet

Emily Dickinson was an American poet. She was largely unpublished and little known during her lifetime, but her work is now regarded as part of the literary canon. The Poetry Foundation describes her writing as creating a distinctively elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized. Her poems are often read for their compressed style and for the way they open up feeling, thought, and possibility with unusual precision.